Waterlilies (c. 1914–15, Portland Art Museum)

Waterlilies is a large canvas of about 1914–15 by Claude Monet of the lily pond in his garden at Giverny, in the Portland Art Museum in Oregon (59.16). Measuring about 160 by 180 centimeters, it is one of the first big lily canvases Monet painted when he returned to the pond in 1914. He gave it to his son Michel, who kept it for decades; the museum bought it from him in 1959 through the Helen Thurston Ayer Fund.

What you're looking at

The canvas shows the pond without a bank. Across the upper half, a broad field of lily pads spreads in rounded clusters of gray-green, olive and blue, and on it sit several large white water lilies, painted as thick, cupped blossoms with pale green and lilac shadows: one at the left, two together at center right, one more at the far right, another at the top. At the upper right, long vertical strokes of green and yellow fall into the water, the reflection of a weeping willow.

The lower half is more open. On the left, a pale lilac and blue passage reflects the sky. In the center and right, the water darkens to deep green and blue, with vertical reflections of foliage. Floating on this darker water, a scatter of flowers in salmon, coral and orange-pink catches the light, and a few pads are drawn as dark rings. At the lower left, a large pad outlined in black and a pink-orange bloom sit close to the viewer.

The combination of large white lilies above and warm coral ones below, with willow reflections, gives the picture a festive, summer light.

The late pond

After the death of his wife Alice in 1911 and of his elder son Jean in 1914, and with his sight clouded by cataracts, Monet returned to the lily pond in 1914 with a new ambition: a cycle of enormous decorative panels that would surround the viewer with water. In 1915 he built a large new studio at Giverny to paint them. Alongside the panels, which went to the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris in 1927, he painted dozens of big canvases of the pond, studies and independent pictures, most of which stayed in the studio, unsigned, until his death in 1926. Portland's canvas comes from the very start of that period, and its handling, broad and loose but still describing individual flowers, sits between the water landscapes of 1903–08 and the near-abstract panels.

How this version differs

Compared with the dark, unfinished Museum Barberini Water Lilies of 1914–17, Portland's is brighter and more fully resolved, with distinct flowers and a clear distinction between pads and water. Compared with the Cleveland Water Lilies (Agapanthus), it is far smaller and more intimate. At the other extreme of scale is the Museum of Modern Art's nearly thirteen-meter Water Lilies, begun the same year.

How it was painted

The white lilies are built up in thick, curving strokes, the heaviest paint in the canvas. The pads are flat, broadly brushed ovals. The willow reflections are long vertical drags of green and yellow, and the sky reflection on the left is laid in with soft, blended strokes. Until recently the colors were deepened by a later, non-original varnish.

Ownership, conservation and where to see it

Michel Monet hung the painting in his dining room for many years before selling it to the Portland Art Museum in 1959; one account says the purchase was funded in part by proceeds from a popular 1958 Van Gogh exhibition. In 2024 the museum received a Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant to clean it. The conservator Charlotte Ameringer removed the discolored varnish, revealing lighter, cooler colors, and the painting returned to view in a new display. For the series see Monet's Water Lilies; for the garden, Giverny; for other public collections of Monet, Where to See Monet's Paintings.